airmanjerm

Good lord yes. My idea on "Vacaville nightlife" is that "it's better than Fairfield," which is like saying that it's better to break your left arm than your right one. lol In the grand scheme, there's not really much unless you want to hang out in some nasty dive bars with old biker chicks. In that case, you're all set! I'd recommend Vacaville over the other local 'villes just if you're looking to live close with a short/easy drive. That commute to San Francisco is no joke - you need to plan at least 2 hours if it's morning/afternoon rush hour, or if you have to be in at a certain time - you often won't need that much, but there will be that day when somebody loses a mattress out on I-80 and traffic will back up for 20 miles (really). At some times when there's no traffic though (nights, mid-day, etc), it's a really easy drive. If you're up for that, there's certainly a lot to do there. If you don't mind that kind of commute though, you can also check out San Jose, which is about 90 miles from Travis and not too bad of a drive. It's further than SF, but with the traffic it just about equals out, depending on the time of day. Very laid back city, either one has plenty to get into (and SF is pretty easy to get to from San Jose, relatively). Either one are good options if you're looking for fun over ease, which I highly agree you should make the most out of at this point.

First, forget buying there unless you plan to retire there. Housing is super-inflated and it takes forever to close on a home. Not trying to trash your dream of eventual home-ownership, but that's the reality. If you've got the money and time, go for it! But otherwise, a good rental company is called Kappel & Kappel (used them for years). If you want to live close to the base, live in Vacaville. It's a short drive from the base (and really easy if you use the back gate), and has a good mix of nightlife, shopping/restaurants/etc. It's also sorta close to Davis, CA which is a college town and has a little more nightlife to check out. You can live in Davis, of course, but it's kind of uber-liberal and really crowded because of the college kids. There are some nice things in Davis for sure, but personally I much preferred living in Vacaville and driving over for the eventual Davis outing. Dixon is a little farming-type community between Vacaville and Davis. It gets crowded once a year with the state fair grounds having events there, but not too bad. Fairfield (where the base is located) has a few nicer areas, but generally a lot more crime and crappy neighborhoods. You can get lucky and find one of the nicer ones of course, but I wouldn't recommend living anywhere close to North Texas Street, or just Texas st. in general. There's a pretty nice housing area that just came up in recent years off of Air Base Pkwy (which leads directly to the main gate), but I can't remember what it's called. I'm sure the housing office could tell you about that one in particular. Cordelia is a little suburb of Fairfield, and one of the nicer little areas. It's pretty quiet, and close to Suisun Community College so there's a decent amount of restaurants and such, but not much else. Suisun is also close to the base, but is really hit-and-miss on the neighborhood quality. Their downtown area used to be really bad, but in the last two years they have renovated it a great deal and it's a little nicer place to visit. (Plus you've gotta check out Bab's Delta Diner for breakfast.) But as far as living there is concerned, it's better than Fairfield but not as safe/entertaining as Vacaville. Some people live as far out as Sacramento for some reason, it's a hell of a commute from there so I wouldn't really recommend it. There's also Benicia, which is the other direction (going towards San Francisco). It's a pretty little town, but not a quick drive. Then there's a pretty big city called Vallejo...it's kind of like a bigger version of Fairfield: lots of crime and bad areas, although you can get lucky and find a nicer spot once in a while I'm sure. Aside from crime/ghetto-level/etc., the other bottom line I'd recommend is this: Vacaville, Fairfield, and Suisun are easy drives (more or less). But if you're gonna live anywhere else, do yourself a favor: if you find some gotta-have-it apartment or house somewhere to rent, get up at 0700 while you're in billeting, drive over to it, and see what traffic is like going and coming. Then do it again in the afternoon anytime between 3:30 and 6:00 p.m. Then ask yourself: is this apartment/house really worth dealing with this much traffic every time I go to the base? People usually underestimate how much traffic there is there, even though the big cities of San Francisco and Sacramento are 45-60 miles away. Good luck...not sure about the squadron that you will work in, but Travis itself is a really nice base, in a lot of ways. Spent 12 years there myself, so it seems like home!

God it's like a Russian version of Lawrence Welk....lol

To be honest...probably so, yes. Tops in Blue has nothing to do with the AF Bands.

They'll have a terribly difficult time trying to sue over this, although I agree it's pretty blatant. First, the U.S. government (specifically, the U.S. Copyright Office) is the originating source for all American musical copyrights; second, the ad was a non-profit advertisement (and for a government agency at that). There's a section of US Copyright Code (Article 12) that also makes it possible for the government to, essentially, do whatever it wants with anything to which a copyright has been issued. That is, so long as the government's use "does not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author." In the end they may try to sue anyway, but my guess is that ASCAP (the company that I believe manages their royalties and copyright) won't want to tangle with the U.S. Government. We've avoided problems like this in the past because it's extremely expensive to sue the government. Their best bet would be to sue CBS....copyrights were definitely violated, and in this case the only people who really made money were (1) the hack that couldn't write an original 30-second rock ditty, and (2) CBS. That $2.3M price tag for Super Bowl advertisements was pretty much public knowledge. Sorry for the lengthy diatribe... Should be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Awesome, and amen back! Roll Tide! (Class of 07!)

VSU: the AFCENT Band is an incarnation of the Air Force Bands, who send rock bands to numerous forward locations to perform...nothing like Tops in Blue. Some of the bigger bases don't draw as big of a crowd (because there's a ton more stuff that goes through those locations), but the more remote spots have a great reaction as they rarely get any sort of live entertainment. As fas as "TIB washouts" though, most members of the AFCENT Bands wouldn't be caught anywhere near a TIB show... plus there's no costumes or silly dancing with jazz hands or spirit fingers.